The Conservative Groupa Palooza, a meeting of local Tea Party groups Sunday in Mill Valley, was sponsored by Bay Area Patriots.

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

The Conservative Groupa Palooza, a meeting of local Tea Party...

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Bob Isherwood (center) matched the American flags at the Conservative Groupa Palooza, a meeting of local Tea Party groups Sunday in Mill Valley sponsored by Bay Area Patriots.

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

Bob Isherwood (center) matched the American flags at the...

Image 4 of 6

Sally Zelikovsky helped organize the Conservative Groupa Palooza, a meeting of Tea Party groups Sunday in Mill Valley sponsored by Bay Area Patriots. Zelikovsky spoke of defeating Nancy Pelosi and making her eat her "humble pie."

The Conservative Groupa Palooza, a meeting of local Tea Party groups Sunday at the Mill Valley Community Center, was so popular that the parking lot was packed and people were on waiting lists to get inside.

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

The Conservative Groupa Palooza, a meeting of local Tea Party...

Image 6 of 6

People line up to get into the Conservative Groupa Palooza, a meeting of local Tea Party groups Sunday in Mill Valley sponsored by Bay Area Patriots.

The signs and placards displayed at Sunday's gathering of about 500 political activists in Mill Valley weren't the usual Marin County fare.

"I (heart) offshore drilling," proclaimed a bumper sticker for sale at one table.

"The road to hell is paved with liberals," declared another.

Over at the Golden Gate Minutemen's booth there was a "No Amnesty 4 Illegal Aliens" sign, while leaflets on a congressional candidate's table denounced her Republican primary opponent as being "to the left of Nancy (Pelosi)."

The Bay Area Patriots, an informal regional arm of the ultraconservative Tea Party movement, assembled at the Mill Valley Community Center to hear political candidates and allies and assure its adherents that they are the wave of the future.

"We would have Obamacare right now if it weren't for each and every one of you," Sally Zelikovsky of San Rafael, chief organizer of the event, told an audience solidly opposed to President Obama's health care proposals.

The Tea Party, known for its anti-tax, anti-government views, has emerged as a force in Republican politics. Sunday's get-together, with a $5 admission fee, may have been its largest showing in the liberal Bay Area, where congressional and legislative representatives are uniformly Democratic.

"I can't talk to anyone anymore about conservative values," lamented one attendee, George Buckle, 70, of San Anselmo, a member of the Marin County Republican Central Committee. "Hopefully, these Tea Parties will tell conservatives, which I consider real Americans, that they're not alone out there."

Speakers stressed their support for a strong military and derided global warming - "the biggest scam in history," said Brian Sussman, a KSFO talk show host promoting his forthcoming book "Climategate."

Some in the room spoke of their conversion to the conservative cause.

Soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "I realized all the things I'd believed since the '60s were a lie," said Carol Negro of Pacifica, founder of a local Tea Party group called MyLiberty. Liberal voices on the radio, she said, "were talking about how it was America's fault."

Bay Area Patriots describes itself as nonpartisan. But most of the visible campaign activity on Sunday was on behalf of Republicans. There were also a few Libertarian and American Independent candidates - one of whom, Jerry Leidecker, an American Independent running for Congress, wore a shirt showing President Obama with what appeared to be watermelon juice on his lips.

Asked about the apparent racial reference, Leidecker turned around to show a caricature of former President George W. Bush on the back of the shirt, labeled, "Fascist."

The gathering was overwhelmingly white, but one African American man, Carl Smith of Novato, bristled at suggestions that the Tea Party is racist.

"Most of these people are my friends," said the 47-year-old plumber. "I don't hang around with racists." Bush, he insisted, "did more for African Americans than any president in history."